So this is my first live time post. Everything written before today was part of the set up effort.
Today, I feel the pressure is on to produce something engaging. I am trying to find a rhythm. I took my morning walk around the yard, made notes of what needs doing, sat in a few seats, walked the paths, noticed changes, drank coffee, the usual routine. But this morning was different because I asked myself, what shall I write about? What shall I share? What would people want to know about?I took a few photos. I wonder what people will see in them. At work, some photos are dismissed as ‘mechanics photos.’ When I first heard that dismissal, I asked what it meant. It turns out, we had a long history of enthusiastic mechanics gleefully offering photographs that just explained everything. And if another mechanic saw them, they could exchange exuberances. ‘Right?’, ‘There it is.’ ‘So great.’ ‘That really shows what is happening.’ Meanwhile, the rest of us would try and be polite as we looked at what could be ink blots.
A picture says one thousand words, but only when a body of knowledge is brought to that picture. I spent too much time this morning wondering what pictures might interest a viewer, when it turns out, the question I was trying to answer has no answer, because, actually, there is no question. I do not actually have a question, just a desire to answer a question.
By way of introduction, I will post two photos. One from the Blues Corner looking toward Persephone, and the other from Persephone looking toward the Blues Corner.
I set these blue Adirondack chairs in several places before I tried this corner, and knew it was right. Turn your back to your troubles and let yourself feel the blues. To the left is the newly planted flower wall with a makeshift bamboo trellis. The matching upside-down pots-over-urns mark the threshold to the veggie garden with its six raised beds and fish pond. I am not sure what will eventually be set up there, and I am not actually ready to think about it.
Beyond that is a barrier to make the Persephone garden more private. It is a heap of mounded dirt, planted with plumb trees, supporting a wall of rail road ties stacked up five high. Colorful ceramic fish swim at its base. I am excited about some poppy seeds I planted last month at the top. The plumb trees are starting to flower, and they really do look like flower clouds raining petals once they start blooming.
The black steel arches mark the entrance into the Persephone Garden. Last year they where planted with a vine sprouting purple spikes of flowers. Other years it has sprouted scarlet runner bean. I do not know what I am planting there, and I am not ready to think of it.
You really cannot quite see the Persephone Garden from the Blues Corner. This blindness is by design. I see more when blinded, and I bet you do to. There is a temptation for all of us to be armchair activists. We run our eyeballs over something, and tell ourselves we have seen it, when we in fact never really left our armchair. Below is a photo of the veggie garden. It can only be seen if you look out a garage window, (never) or if you actually go walk out to it.
Once the Flower Wall is built, the Veggie Garden will not be visible from the Blues Corner, which is fine by me. In fact, it is what I am trying to achieve. For now, I do like surveying the progress of the asparagus and sorrel. I served them the other night with seared New Bedford scallops, and what I harvested has grown back, and more.
Here is the view from the Persephone Garden to the Blues Corner.
The wooden trellis marks the doorway separating the Persephone Garden and the Woodlands. The bit of blue in the top right is the Blues Corner. The distance is not so far, but because the line of sight is broken by so many events, it seems longer. If this were a rolling lawn, it would be a small one. Distance is subjective, relative, situational and in the end, just an illusion.
I just got a text from my garden guy Nick telling me he is on his way. I have my list. I better get ready. More tomorrow.